


Oliver

by achoo_gesundheit



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anxiety, Explicit Language, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 02:52:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3471662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achoo_gesundheit/pseuds/achoo_gesundheit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Sometimes I still hear him,” Oliver says.</p><p>His therapist nods sagely, scribbling something down on his legal pad. “What does he tell you?” he asks.</p><p>“That people are toxic.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oliver

Oliver had always been anxious, but after James died, everything got worse.

  

“Sometimes I still hear him,” Oliver says.

His therapist nods sagely, scribbling something down on his legal pad. “What does he tell you?” he asks.

“That people are toxic.”

  

Oliver fell in love the way most people fall down stairs. The first few steps were an awkward, halting tumble, limbs flailing in vain to slow his downward progress. Then, there was the inevitable surrender as inertia took over, his body’s own momentum pulling him to the bottom until he landed with a dull thud, broken, bruised, but still breathing.

Thinking back, he wondered at the thud. He had always imagined love to sound more dramatic, maybe a bang, or a crash. But, as it turns out, love was more like a thud.

Some mornings, Oliver woke up alone in their bed. He reached out blindly, groping for a warmth that wasn’t there, and the panic set in. He sat up and searched, bleary-eyed, for some sign of life, before reaching for his glasses and heading for the door. That’s when he smelled it, the deep, rich scent of hot coffee. He pushed his way into the hallway, sock-clad feet slipping silently over wooden floors as he chased the scent into the kitchen. James was there, mug steaming in his hand before he pressed it into Oliver’s open palms, and Oliver lifted it to his face, breathing in the aroma of a perfectly prepared drink. James always got it just right, the exact ratio of coffee to cream, hot enough to curl your toes but still cool enough to drink without pause.

Oliver loved how his hands fit around the mug so the heat would seep into them slowly. He loved that first taste on his tongue, the not-quite-scalding sensation of a small sip sliding down his throat, and the warmth that settled in his stomach, radiating out to unseen fears and empty spaces.

Then, Oliver lowered the mug just slightly, so he could peer over the rim at James. He felt his heart thud in his chest, and he thought, _this is what love feels like_.

The problem with cups of coffee was that they were always gone too fast.

 

“So, rumor has it you’re hearing voices,” Oliver’s sister says when he answers the phone.

Oliver shifts, wedging the phone between his cheek and his shoulder before going back to washing dishes. “Hey, Jean.”

“Well? Are you?”

“I’m not hearing voices, Jean.”

“Well good, because I can’t have some lunatic hanging around my kids.”

Oliver chuckles. “How are the kids?”

“They’re good,” Jean says. “They miss their uncle.”

Oliver scrubs harder at a particularly stubborn stain.

“You should come over for dinner sometime,” she says.

“Yeah,” Oliver agrees. “That would be nice.”

“How about Wednesday?”

Oliver glances over to the calendar, rows of empty squares lined up like tombstones, and says, “I think I’m busy then.”

“Ollie,” a pause. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

Oliver rinses the last mug, sets it at the end of a line of coffee-stained reminders, and shuts the faucet off. “Top notch, Jeanie.”

 

Sometimes Oliver feels radioactive.

“I feel radioactive,” he told James once, and James laughed, bumped Oliver’s shoulder with his own, and told him maybe he’d become the next ninja turtle. And then James leaned in for a kiss, and Oliver leaned away, retreating back into his shell. “Stop,” he said, “I might poison you.”

That’s when James sighed, ran a hand through his hair, let it rest on the back of Oliver’s neck to squeeze for just a moment, before whispering, “Okay. Okay.”

Oliver knew anxiety wasn’t contagious, understood that kissing James wouldn’t make him the same. It was only Oliver who feared the silent pauses, the awkward moments, the explosions. But he still couldn’t help worrying that, like syrup, the sinking, sticky sense of panic might spread.

 

Coffee seemed to help.

“You know most people drink coffee to wake up, not calm down, right?” His sister asks as she pours him another cup.

Oliver nods, taking a quick pull from the mug and feeling the tides of unease begin to ebb. It’s many weeks after that Wednesday, but he has finally made it to dinner. He slides his chair a little further into the corner, taking another sip. “It seems to help,” he says.

Jean doesn’t ask if he means the coffee or the corner. Instead, she gives him a sisterly punch in the shoulder, making him flinch. “I know,” she says.

 _I know you_ , Oliver hears.

 

“Hey, don’t I know you?” James had asked.

It was the fifth consecutive day Oliver had gone to the cafe next to the studio. It was 8:23am, which Oliver had calculated meant exactly three minutes after Rob from the storyboard department ordered his iced red eye with skim, and five minutes before Cindy from printing came in to get her daily mochaccino. It had taken him a few days to get the timing just right, so that James would always be the one to hand him his small coffee, with cream.

“I work in the building next door,” Oliver told him, making sure their fingers didn’t touch as he took the to-go cup. “I’m Oliver,” he choked out.

“I know,” James said, and laughed when Oliver looked surprised. James pointed to the coffee. “It’s written on the cup.”

Oliver turned red, clutched his cup a little tighter, and wished he hadn’t said anything at all.

“I’m James, by the way.”

A smile pushed its way onto Oliver’s face. “I know,” he said. When James looked surprised, Oliver delighted in saying, “It’s written on your apron.”

More laughter bubbled up between them, and Oliver felt the flush begin to recede.

The next day at 8:23, James handed Oliver a to-go cup with his phone number scrawled across the bottom.

 

Oliver clutches his cup tightly in Jean’s kitchen and says, “Thank you,” words stumbling slowly off his tongue.

Jean smiles at him the way she smiles at her daughters when they’ve remembered to clear their plates or wash their hands, and Oliver tries to remember what it felt like to be six, when clean hands and a smile from Jean meant a good day. He wants to remember, because he’s twenty-seven and feels so very old, and he doesn’t make Jean smile the way he used to.

She’s still there, though. She still gives him the seat in the corner, lets him eat in scared silence, and shoos his nieces out of the room when everything gets to be too much. If she occasionally breaks the unspoken rule that says Oliver is not to be touched, he makes himself believe she means it as a comfort, knows he can accept little else but fleeting affection and near-perfect drinks.

Oliver’s next thought is for the small body crawling into his lap. He sees Jean lurch forward, reaching out to remove his youngest niece from atop his knees, and Oliver says, “No, it’s alright,” and attempts to still the shaking of his hands as he sets his cup down gently on the table. “Hi, Sophie,” he says.

“Hi,” Sophie says, little hands reaching up to rest on his shoulders. “You okay, Uncle Ollie?”

He can feel Jean shifting next to him, ready to scoop Sophie up and haul her away.

Oliver lets his hands set atop Sophie’s shoulders, a playful mirror of childhood earnestness. “I’m just kind of sad today,” he tells her.

“Because of Uncle James?” she asks.

Oliver nods.

“You miss him?”

Oliver nods again. “A lot.”

“Me, too,” Sophie agrees. She tilts her head to one side, studying Oliver. He tries not to squirm. “Momma says he made you better.”

Oliver’s arm moves of its own accord, fingers twitching toward the cooling mug on the table, but Sophie grabs his hand before he can reach it. Oliver looks down to see her fingers wrapping around his own, her pink nails sparkling against his skin.

“Don’t worry,” she says, giving his hand a little pat. “Momma’s making mac and cheese for dinner, and that always helps me feel better.”

Relief swells in Oliver’s chest, and he nods. “It’s true,” he says, “your mom’s mac and cheese is magical.”

He feels Jean’s hand on his back, a fleeting encouragement, and he tries not to wince.

 

“So, Oliver,” his therapist says at their next session. “Tell me more about the voices you’re hearing.”

“I’m not hearing voices,” Oliver says from his chair in the corner.

“You’re not?” his therapist asks.

“No.”

His therapist makes a note on his legal pad.

“It’s not voices,” Oliver tells him. “Just one.”

“James’s voice,” his therapist affirms, and Oliver nods. “Tell me about what it sounds like.”

Oliver doesn’t like to think about that. He chooses not to acknowledge the fact that the James in his head does not always sound like the James that he lost. He certainly does not care to grapple with the thought that the only voice inside his head is inevitably his own.

“Like truth,” Oliver forces out. “It sounds like truth.”

 

Oliver never wanted to hear things.

On bad nights, after long days of work and even longer arguments, James baked. Oliver watched as he carefully measured out ingredients, knowing James found some sort of comfort in the careful and precise combinations of materials into a cohesive whole. Oliver saw it all come together before him and thought _, I’m like flour._

“I’m like flour,” he told James.

James sighed, exasperated, and asked, “Oliver, what are you talking about?” egg cracking cleanly in his hand before sliding into the bowl.

“I make things sticky,” Oliver said.

James looked over then, hand coming up to wipe at a smudge of brown sugar high on his cheek. “Flour helps make things less sticky, too,” he said.

And Oliver heard, _You’re what keeps us from sticking._

 

“Oliver, there’s no food in your house,” his sister shouts from the pantry. “When’s the last time you went to the store?”

Oliver glances at the calendar and counts backwards in days. He knows he walked to the supermarket on Tuesday, because he had run into Rob from the storyboard department. Oliver had been holding a carton of eggs, checking for cracks, and Rob had come around the corner from the juice aisle. He was surprised to see Oliver out and about, he had said, missed him at work, loved the pages he’d been sending in, and how was he coping? And somehow Oliver had remembered to place the eggs down gently, sliding them back on the shelf, and to smile for Rob’s benefit. “Cracked,” Oliver had explained, and then, unable to face the perky, gum-chewing cashier, left with no purchases, and ordered a pizza instead. That was Tuesday, and Oliver realizes he doesn’t know what day it is.

“I think there’s pizza in the fridge,” he hollers back.

Then, Jean is banging her way out of the pantry, box of stale Lucky Charms dangling from one hand. “What is this shit?” she asks.

Oliver snatches it from her, replacing it on the shelf next to the half-eaten box of Wheaties. “It’s cereal,” he tells her.

“Yeah, cereal that you hate,” Jean says, following him out of the kitchen. “Why’s it even in here?”

 

On good nights, James gleefully kicked open the door to their room, claiming he needed nourishment of the sugary, breakfast food variety. “I’m going to the store!” he said, grabbing Oliver by the back of his shirt. “And you’re coming with me!”

Oliver groaned and begged to be left at home. Couldn’t James get his cereal fix by himself? Oliver hated the grocery store. There were too many people and not enough corners.

“Oh, no you don’t!” James said, shoving Oliver’s feet into sneakers and hauling him to the door. “You are getting out of this house, and you are buying me cereal.”

They went to the store. Oliver threw a box of Lucky Charms into an otherwise empty cart and turned back to glare at James. James just winked and gave the cart one strong push before jumping on, narrowly avoiding collision on his way to the check out.

 

Oliver jabs the button to turn on the coffee pot. “It was his favorite,” he tells Jean.

“Oliver.”

“Do you want any coffee, Jeanie?” he asks, not turning around.

“Ollie, stop.”

“It won’t be as good as his,” he says, reaching for a clean mug.

Jean’s hand is on his shoulder. He looks down, and her nails don’t sparkle. She is earnest but not innocent. They both know he’s not getting better. “How long has that box been in there?”

 

Three months – it could be a moment, or a lifetime. Oliver isn’t sure which it feels like yet. But he is sure that if he had known three months ago he would be leaving on his last, late-night Lucky Charms run, or that 1:30 in the morning was the prime time for drunk drivers to be going 80 miles per hour past a suburban shopping center, he probably would’ve argued much more against going. But he wouldn’t know any of this until James pulled out onto Route 10, laughing and telling Oliver, “See that wasn’t so bad, was it?” as a car with no headlights on drove into the driver’s side door. Oliver heard the bang, felt the crash like slow-motion, pulse ringing loudly in his ears. They would tell him that James died on impact, that Oliver’s broken ribs would take a couple months to heal, and that they were sorry for his loss. Tucked safely in the back seat, wrapped in nothing but a plastic grocery bag, the Lucky Charms would go unharmed.

 

In his kitchen, Oliver pours himself a cup of coffee, adding cream and watching as it drifts in swirls and eddies before disappearing. “Do you think he was the cream or the coffee?” he asks Jean, and he feels himself being tugged around to face her.

“You’re not a metaphor, Oliver,” she says, pulling the mug out of his hands. “And I know you have issues, but I need you to be a grown-up, for once.”

“Excuse me?”

“This,” Jean says, grabbing the cereal box again and waving it at Oliver, “is not adult behavior.”

Oliver swats the box away from his face. “This is how I’ve always been!”

“I’m not talking about anxiety, Oliver!” Jean cries, slamming the box down on the table, making Oliver wince. “I know what anxiety looks like, and this, right here,” she says, flapping her hands at Oliver, “is a tantrum.”

“You don’t get it!” Oliver shouts, and it feels good to yell. “You just don’t get it.”

Jean snorts. “Don’t I?”

Oliver falters, and remembers.

 

“You just don’t get it!” Oliver shouted.

“Then make me understand!” James pleaded, hands reaching out to grab Oliver’s, and Oliver jerked back, irrational fear causing a visceral reaction his rational mind couldn’t counter.

“I can’t!” Oliver cried. He searched frantically for the right metaphor, something to explain the panic looming at the periphery of every interaction, the way he worried that every word he said might be the wrong one, that every event skipped for Oliver’s sake would be the one to make James leave, or that every day he didn’t manage to articulate, “I love you,” would be the day James decided he wasn’t worth the trouble. Oliver shook his head, and wrapped his arms around himself as tight as they would go. “I can’t.”

James yelled in frustration and flung his hands in the air. “I can’t, either, Oliver!” he shouted. “I’m not a mind-reader!”

Oliver felt tears brimming behind his eyes. He sat down on the sofa.

“I love you,” James said. “You’re ridiculous, and exhausting, and this is a mess, but God help me, I do.”

Oliver’s lungs expanded as he sucked in a shaky breath. He opened his mouth, ready to say those words he practiced every day in his head, but what came out instead was an unsteady, “Why?”

“Fuck!” James yelled, hands coming up to fist in his hair. “I don’t know! Because you’re funny as hell when you’re not freaking out? And you care so much about people, and you try so hard to make them happy, but God, Oliver, why can’t you ever just let yourself be happy?” He slowed down, blinking rapidly for a moment. “Are you happy, Oliver?”

Oliver cried.

“I think I need to go,” James said, then. “I just- I have to go.”

Oliver heard the door shut quietly behind him, and wept.

He didn’t remember calling Jean, didn’t remember the sound of the buzzer, or opening the door to his apartment. But suddenly she was there, wrapping him into her arms in spite of the ongoing shudders, and she let Oliver cry a teary puddle into her shoulder.

“I love him,” he recited into her sweater, “I love him, Jeanie. I love him.”

 

“I know you better than you think,” Jean says. “And I’ve seen you at your worst.”

Oliver thinks back to that night on his sofa. “This isn’t the same,” he tells her.

“Finally! He sees reason.”

“No, Jean, it’s not-“ Oliver shakes his head. “I’m not an infant.”

“Well I’m glad we agree on something, at least,” Jean cuts in.

“God!” Oliver yells. “Would you just let me- just let me try to get this out?”

Jean falls silent.

“It’s not the same,” he says again, eyes fixed on the floor. “He’s not coming back this time.”

 

Oliver had called James every hour, finally managing to eke out a three-word voice message at 8:23 the morning after.

When Oliver opened the door at 9:46, James smiled wearily and stepped into the apartment.

“There better be coffee,” he said, and let the door swing closed behind him.

 

“So,” Jean says from her precarious perch on the counter, “how are we going to fix this?” She roots around in the cabinet above the refrigerator, emerging with a dusty bottle of Maker’s Mark. “Oh, thank God,” she murmurs, pouring a healthy dose into a mug.

Oliver regards her skeptically. “Fix me,” he corrects her.

Jean sighs, heaving herself off the counter. “That’s not what I meant, Oliver.”

“You can’t fix me,” he says, taking the bottle, and thinking of broken ribs and shattered windows. “I’m not that kind of broken.”

“You were better with James,” Jean insisted. “Weren’t you?”

Oliver laughs a shaky sort of laugh and tries to make her understand what James did for him. James didn’t fix him. James learned how to stuff the empty spaces with little things. Bowls of Lucky Charms and perfect cups of coffee made the tide of dread recede. But the nature of anxiety meant that at the end of the day the words they said would be replaced by a broken mimicry of their original intent, and Oliver would have no choice but to submerge once again beneath the waves of disquiet.

“I won’t get better,” Oliver tells Jean.

“How can you know if you don’t even try?” she asks, angry again.

Oliver lifts his coffee and takes a slow sip, feels the bourbon burn on its way down. “I am trying, Jeanie,” he says, as forcefully as he can manage. “I’m trying.”

Jean sighs, and runs a hand over her face before moving it to rest warm and heavy on Oliver’s shoulder. “So try harder.”

 

Sometimes, during his nightly recitation, Oliver felt James shift next to him, rolling over to wrap a steady arm around his chest, and telling Oliver to hush, enough, time for sleep. For once, for this, Oliver allowed the touch, took comfort in the knowledge that there was someone behind him and tried not to think about how much James gave him while receiving so little in return. Oliver tried to contain his radiation, to keep his dread from sticking, to dust the flour off his eyes, and sleep.

 

His therapist has moved the chair to the middle of the room.

Oliver fidgets, mug quaking where it rests atop his knee.

“You said James told you that people are toxic,” his therapist says.

Oliver nods.

“Which people?” his therapist asks.

 

Every so often, especially after anxiety attacks, Oliver made James tell him why he stayed.

James just pulled him close, arms looped low around his waist, and told him about mornings in the kitchen, about cups of coffee and hidden smiles. James explained that he loved the way those smiles filled him up, warming him from the inside out. And he loved the way his hands fit around Oliver like a cup of coffee, heat seeping into him slowly. He told him he was in love with the way they melted together, coffee to cream, the perfect proportions. “You’re intoxicating,” James whispered.

And for a moment, Oliver just let them exist, uncomplicated, two boys in a kitchen, in love with how it feels to be just right.

It was only after that caffeine wore off, when James was snoring next to him in their bed, that Oliver replayed the day’s dialogue in his head, and heard a repeating litany of, _You’re toxic, you’re toxic, you’re toxic._

 

“Me,” Oliver says, coffee going cold in his cup, “I think it’s me.”


End file.
